Semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) exhibit excellent optical and electronic properties, tunable by their size and shape dependent quantum confinement effect. However, the successful materials with incredible achievements mostly contain heavy metal elements. Unfortunately, the toxicity and related regulatory aspects impede further wide spread implementation of these colloidal semiconductor NCs. Considering this, and the high interest in furthering the accomplishments of colloidal chemical control demonstrated for the Cd-chalcogenides, it is an important challenge to explore and develop new heavy-metal free semiconductor NCs. In particular, we consider a seemingly minor change from cadmium- to zinc-chalcogenides, which naively would appear as an easy translation of the chemical synthesis principles to a closely related element system. We will present various approaches for the synthesis of Zn-chalcogenide nanocrystals, in particular with regards to shape control of these systems. A few surprises are revealed, including the formation of nanorod couples as one example. Moreover, hetersotructures including Zn-chalcogenides dumbbells will be described. Controlling the shell morphologies from flat to islands to a unique helical shell architecture will be presented. Aspects pertaining to the structure-function relationshpsfor these architectures will also be discussed.

Synthesis of morphology controlled Zn-chalcogenide nanocrystals: A few surprises

2019 Spring National Meeting

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